Windows 8 beta to emerge ‘over the coming months’

Microsoft will be letting developers and testers try out pre-release versions of Windows 8 “over the coming months,” the company’s Windows boss wrote in a blog post Monday.

Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live division, has started a new blog, “Building Windows 8,” where you can keep track of the engineering process for the next version of Microsoft’s operating system. From his introductory post:

We showed you a preview of Windows 8 in June, demonstrating the user experience and providing an update on ARM SoC (system on a chip) support. The next major event for Windows is our BUILD conference in September, where we will provide developers with more details about the full spectrum of tools and capabilities available to make the most of Windows 8. This blog is a chance for us to discuss the details and provide a behind the scenes look at the evolution of Windows 8.

With our preview in June, we started by showing you user experience, because it is the most visible change to Windows. Rest assured we’ve thoughtfully engineered changes across the full range of Windows capabilities. But this presents us a challenge in deciding where to start the dialog.

Microsoft also has started a Windows 8 account on Twitter: @BuildWindows8. We also seem to have a new logo for Windows 8, shown above – obviously inspired by the “Metro” design from Windows Phone 7.